Counsel for Kings: Wisdom and Politics in Tenth-Century Iran

Classical Arabic literature is central to Arabic-Islamic culture and provides important pathways to a more grounded and nuanced understanding of Islam, the world it created and the civilisation it spawned. It has thus far been studied as driven by poetry and the demands of a secular court culture. This series will depart from such conventions to provide new insights into classical Arabic literature in light of state of the art cultural and literary theory including theories of gender, empire, textuality, reader response, performance, narrative and semiotics. Books in the series will examine the literature from a multi-disciplinary perspective including language studies, history, folklore, Islamic studies, political and economic institutions, art, archaeology and material culture.